


The Mechanics Of One's Heart

by Kendrene



Series: Smut(not so)Cation 2018 [6]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alpha Korra, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Morning Cuddles, Omega Asami Sato, Oral Sex, Protective Korra, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 14:49:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16894653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: Trying to avoid having to sell her father's company, Asami finds herself all-consumed by work. She forgets to eat, sleep, visit her friends. An accident that could have had catastrophic consequences and Korra, remind her that friendship and love exist outside her workshop.





	The Mechanics Of One's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I got a prompt on Tumblr a while ago, concerning Asami working way too late and Korra visiting her for a "distraction". Well, I don't know if this is exactly what the prompter intended, but here you go.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy.
> 
> \- Dren

Asami ran a hand over her face, grimacing when she realized she was smearing her cheeks with grease. 

The latest prototype for a more performing Satomobile engine lay in shambles on her work table, bolts and bits of metal only she would know the use of scattered around the crankshaft. 

Her eyes burned from lack of sleep and her stomach rumbled. but her mind was too jammed by formulae and equations to consider things as mundane as rest or food. 

“Maybe if I…” 

Muttering to herself, Asami circled the table, spanner in hand. She tightened some bolts and loosened some others, before fiddling with the mechanism that would feed gasoline to the prototype and start it. 

The engine sputtered. It coughed, the crankshaft vibrating hard enough it sent some of the discarded parts to crash on the floor. Then, just when it seemed her attempt would fail, the contraption roared to life, so loud Asami had to put her hands over her ears to keep them from hurting too badly. 

“Yes!” She couldn’t hear herself, but she threw her head back and howled her triumph. 

She’d done it. With an improved design and better gas mileage, the new engines would be easier to make when entering production, thus making the Satomobile way more affordable than it was now. This model wasn’t as powerful as the old one, but the new cars were made with the middle class in mind. 

_ Father will be proud.  _

The entirety of her being  _ crumpled  _ at the thought as if she were a piece of paper at the mercy of a child.

Unwilling to deal with the pain stabbing her through the heart, Asami redirected her attention to the engine. She let her hands drop away, allowing the noise to pour into her ears and numb her, and hoped it would be enough to keep the dark thoughts away.

Everything else happened so fast that afterward she’d struggle to make sense of it for days. 

One moment the engine was chugging away as well-oiled pistons and brass components moved in interlocked, beautiful harmony. The next, a loud  _ bang _ disrupted the engine’s purr, the sound changing to that of a shrieking banshee. Acrid smoke filled the workspace and obscured Asami’s view. 

She had the presence of mind to throw herself on the ground, hands flying to cover her head while loosened screws ripped whichever way. Shards of metal shrieked above her, zipping past her ears to rain, louder than hail, against the huge glass windows that covered the surface of one wall. 

It didn’t take long for the glass to shatter under the onslaught; the windows broke into a million pieces, shards cascading outside with an almost musical sound.

It was over almost as soon as it had begun, and Asami was left to pick herself up on shaky legs, her lungs itching from the smoke. 

If the workshop had been a mess before, now it looked like a warzone. 

Surveying the disaster, Asami wanted to cry; a mound of twisted metal occupied the space where the engine had sat, the clean lines she had designed now jagged and broken. Sparks occasionally flew from broken wires, and the fuel line had been neatly cleaved in two, leaving an oily pool of gasoline to gather on the floor.

She ought to mop it up before a stray spark set it on fire – flames were already eating away at the piles of notes the shockwave had flung at the four corners of the room – but Asami could only stare, rooted to the spot, as countless nights of work went up in smoke.

Watching the scraps of paper curl up as they turned black felt like a bitter parallel of what had happened to her life. With Hiroshi at the helm of Future Industries, Asami had been confident. Sheltered. In more ways than one - pampered. Now, with the investors fleeing bad publicity and the company on the verge of collapse around her – a slow but sure demise she’d been unable to stop so far – Asami was beginning to realize just how many things she’d been taking for granted.

Already she’d been forced to sell some of her personal assets in order to cover the losses and pay the workers who’d decided to remain by her side and, if things didn’t improve fast, she’d soon have to sell the mansion or, worse still, some of Future Industries satellite businesses.

To top it off, some had taken the company’s struggle as a clear sign that being an Omega made Asami unfit to lead. She suspected that the insinuation had been spread by one of her father’s rivals - they’d been circling Future Industries like vultures since his arrest - but if she failed she’d prove them right, and the rumor’s source would scarcely matter. Besides, now that the whispers had begun, it would be wasted energy to try and stop them. 

Asami could call one of Republic City’s newspapers and try, but wrong words taken out of context would only serve to undermine her further. 

Part of the ruined engine collapsed to the floor with a  _ clang  _ and the sound jerked Asami back to the present, making her jump. 

Despite the fact her notes were still burning, the pop and crackle of the fire a merry juxtaposition to the ruined workspace, the smoke had cleared somewhat. It streamed in black banners through the blown out windows, rapidly dispersing in the night beyond.

_ Night? _

It was not uncommon for Asami to lose track of time but, as a wave of dizziness washed over her, the last few days became a blur. Asami had become so caught up in her new project that the world itself had rushed ahead, seemingly leaving her behind. As if on cue, pangs of hunger twisted her stomach into knots, bending her double. When Asami tried to recall the last time she’d stopped to grab a bite or rest, she realized that she could not. 

Eyes blurry from the smoke, she stepped forward, meaning to stomp out the flames before more than paper caught fire. She’d barely moved however, when the door to the workshop crashed open. 

“Asami!” 

Korra’s anguished call was followed by the sound of running feet and a crash and a string of heartfelt curses. Sight partly obscured by lingering smoke, the Alpha must have tripped over something,

Asami spotted her a moment later. An half-glimpsed silhouette wreathed in smoke, Korra looked like an otherworldly apparition come to haunt her, and she reflexively hugged herself, trying to control a shiver.

Had she fallen asleep in the midst of her work? Perhaps the explosion and the chaos that had ensued were nothing but a nightmare, conjured by her worries to torture her.

Impossible: the Avatar had come to a halt in front of her and she appeared far too solid to be a dream or ghost. Brow knitted in concern, she looked Asami over, as if making sure that no part of her had ended up scattered among the debris. The Alpha’s piercing eyes zeroed in on Asami’s face and widened, the white showing completely.

“What?”

Asami dimly remembered smearing grease on her face by accident, but the expression traversing Korra’s face was one of shock and a concern so strong it bordered on panic. That in itself was upsetting: Asami had seen Korra afraid before, but her blue eyes had always held a sliver of self-assurance, even in their most desperate hours.

This… this was something different.

“Your face.” Korra gestured and the fires burning around the room winked out like they’d never existed in the first place. “You’re bleeding.”

The Alpha chewed the statement out and, when she lowered her hand, Asami noticed that it was shaking ever so slightly.

_ I am? _

Asami raised a hand to her cheek, wincing when her fingers found a rip in her skin. The cut was jagged, too shallow to be of real concern, but deep enough to begin throbbing as soon as she touched it. A sliver of metal must have grazed her face without her noticing when she’d dived in search of cover. Suddenly nauseous, Asami lowered her hand, numbness spreading from her blood-stained fingers to the rest of her. One inch higher and she would have lost an eye.

She tried to swallow, but the muscles of her throat refused to work, locked in place by fear.

Ice spread through her veins and, by contrast, the cut was like a line of fire burning along her cheekbone.  

The horror of what could have happened struck Asami so hard that her mind instinctually sought refuge in the familiar. Her eyes moved from Korra to the ruined engine, a gaze trained by hundreds of hours spent as her father’s shadow while he inspected the company’s production lines, already scanning the heap of brass and iron for design flaws. If she could fix what had caused the explosion, she could do the same with her life. 

Perhaps in other circumstances she’d have scoffed at her own naivety and dismissed the thought as a ludicrous fantasy more suited to a child than a grown woman, but in that moment she clung to it as if her very existence depended on it.

“I should clean up.” 

Following her statement she bent down and picked up one of the engine’s parts, its appearance so far removed from the original shape that she couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. The metal was rapidly cooling, but still hot enough she had to juggle the engine part from hand to hand to avoid scorching her fingers. 

Asami walked around the workshop on wooden legs, stopping whenever she found an engine part big enough to be picked up. The rest she’d have to sweep up later, the mix of broken glass and blackened, half-melted bolts too messy to be scooped up by hand.

She set herself to the task mechanically, falling into a strange rhythm as she went. It was - in a way - like an out of body experience with her mind neatly split in two; one part of her stood facing Korra, the other puttered around the workshop vainly trying to restore some sort of order.

“Asami, stop.” 

The Alpha’s scent enveloped her, as pungent as the smoke had been, and something closed around her wrist, halting her in her tracks. 

Asami looked down, her thoughts molasses-slow, and it took her a moment to realize that it was Korra’s hand on her. 

“You can straighten tomorrow.” The Avatar plucked what engine parts Asami had managed to gather from her arms, letting go of her long enough to dump them on a nearby table. “I’ll help you and I’m sure Mako and Bolin will as well if we ask them.” 

Her voice didn’t waver, and yet it sounded strange, like there was something caught in the back of her throat that the Alpha was failing to swallow down. 

“No.” Asami tried to squeeze between Korra and the table, hoping the Alpha would get the hint, and let her go back to her work. “I need to get it done now. I need…” 

Korra moved in lock-step with her, her brows drawing downward as she shook her head. She said nothing, but kept putting herself between Asami and the broken engine, so that they ended up engaged into an awkward kind of dance. 

“I’ve had enough.” Asami raised her chin, resisting the urge to stomp her foot in irritation. That, she knew, would make her look petulant. Instead she stepped forward, coming nose to nose with the Alpha as she invaded her personal space. 

“ _ Move _ .” Surprising herself she put her hands on Korra’s shoulders and shoved her back a couple of paces. The Avatar stumbled, a grunt leaving her displeased mouth when she hip-checked the edge of the table. Throwing out a hand, she straightened, her face hard and her scent so heavy it made the air between them suffocating. 

“I won’t. Not until you acknowledge what just happened.” 

“Accidents happen.” Asami replied flatly. She would need more than ten fingers to count the times one of Hiroshi’s prototypes had fallen apart during testing. It was part of the process and at times it may lead to scary outcomes, but the thrill of finally making an idea work in practice… that was worth  _ everything _ . She tried to push past Korra again, but this time the Alpha struck first, faster than a viper. 

Before Asami could come close to laying a finger on her, Korra had grabbed both of her wrists and spun both of them around, pushing her away from the worktable. 

“Let me go!” Irritation flared inside Asami, and she kicked savagely, her heel connecting with Korra’s shins more times than she missed. She tried to wiggle free at the same time, painfully aware that, at any moment, the Avatar may decide to bundle up her stubborn ass in ropes of Air.

She kicked again, the back of her boot thumping heavily against Korra’s leg, but the Alpha didn’t even wince. Asami was wearing ungainly, ugly-looking working boots, but her energy would have been better spent kicking stone. 

Korra simply rolled her eyes, a cocky Alpha sneer plastered on her lips. Asami didn’t know if it were because of the lack of sleep, or of eyes that felt like they were being sanded down everytime she blinked, but the annoyance that had been building up inside her, turned to full-fledged anger. 

Bile burned her throat, the taste ironically similar to that of the lukewarm tea she’d been slugging to stay vigilant. Struggling not to gag, Asami raised one leg, bringing her boot down on Korra’s foot with a satisfying crunch. 

She didn’t mean to really hurt Korra, but the Alpha did deserve a bit of bruising. 

_ She deserves more than that and you know it. None of this would have happened if not for her.  _

The thought was an unfair one, Asami knew as soon as it formed inside her mind. 

Korra’s digging may have uncovered her father’s designs, but it was Hiroshi who, blinded by vengeance, had chosen to support Amon. Knowing him, he’d probably factored in the possibility that the Equalists may lose, and still he had decided to bet his entire fortune on them. He must have also realized that some would consider Asami as guilty of treason as him, on the basis of shared blood, but judged his goal to be worth the fallout.

Her father had made his bed amongst vipers, but Asami had ended up poisoned as well.

“Look.”

Asami blinked, a shiver rushing down her spine when a blast of icy air slapped her across the face. Korra had half-pushed, half-pulled her to where the windows had been, and now they teetered on what looked like the edge of an impossible abyss.

As they had discovered, Hiroshi’s inner sanctum and private workshop had been hidden underground, so Asami had elected to build hers on the family mansion top floor. That particular part of the house had been her mother’s domain; she’d had her solarium there, and the airy space Asami refurbished had been the parlor where Yasuko entertained Republic City’s most influential women.

Asami remembered hovering just outside the parlor - the door barely open enough for her to peek inside - and listening in on her mother and the other ladies, fascinated by conversation she could scarcely comprehend. Later, once her mother’s guests had left, Asami would slip inside the parlor with her dolls, arranging them where the ladies had sat to serve them tea.

She’d been a pup then, barely old enough to climb the endless flights of stairs all on her own. 

“Look.” Korra repeated, breaking Asami out of the memory. The Avatar’s fingers closed, steel-like around her chin, directing her gaze to the city below them. 

Republic City’s lights glittered in the dark like a scattering of diamond dust, a dazzling landscape that Asami had seen million of times before. It was another reason why she’d taken her mother’s old parlor as her working space - by keeping the city always in sight she’d never forget what they had come so close to losing. 

Glass crunched underfoot as she tore herself away from the vista, turning so fast that the world began to spin around them. The wind was howling now, and its shrieks blanked her mind of all thoughts. This high above the city, the breeze was vicious and cruel, strong enough that - without Korra’s arms holding her - it might pull Asami out into the darkness.

“I don’t understand,” she rasped through chattering teeth, “what am I supposed to be looking at?”

“What you almost lost.” Even though her face was half-obscured by shadow, Asami could pick out the concern digging deep wrinkles in the Alpha’s brow. 

“I was coming to check on you when I heard the explosion.” Korra continued before she could find anything to say. “You have no idea how bad it looked, do you? I thought…” Her hands closed around Asami’s shoulders, as if she were afraid the Omega may disappear at any given time. She was trembling and doing her best to hide it. Despite her efforts, Asami felt it, like a vibration passing through her chest. 

_ And it’s not from the cold either. _ Again panic was twisting the Alpha’s features and, before Korra blinked them away, Asami saw tears in her eyes. 

“You were… checking on me?” She asked, trying to change the topic. The truth was that Asami felt conflicted about Korra. The Avatar was her friend of course, but lately she’d found that her thoughts - and her eyes - lingered on the Alpha in unexpected ways. Asami  _ desired _ her. 

Other Omegas would call her a fool. What was there not to desire in Korra? She was loyal to a fault and full of courage, ready to back up those she loved no matter what it cost her. And she was hot. Plenty of unmated Omegas visited Air Temple Island in the hopes to attract the Avatar’s interest or - should all else fail - that of her cock. The pilgrimage was undoubtedly encouraged by Tenzin, who must think that finding a mate for his pupil would settle her down somewhat. 

Asami had to swallow back a snort. 

_ Clearly he doesn’t know her at all. _

Admitting that she liked Korra - in the twist-your-stomach, wet-your-panties kind of way - was a hard thing to reconcile with the part the Avatar had played in her family’s demise. 

If he knew, Hiroshi would call her a disgrace. A traitor. 

“Of course I came checking on you.” Confusion replaced worry on Korra’s face and the Avatar pulled back, teeth flashing as she chewed her lip in thought. Gently, as if Asami was more delicate than porcelain, Korra cupped her cheeks, pressing the heel of a hand to her forehead. 

“Asami..” Korra had to pause and wet her lips, and Asami was left helpless by the gesture. her eyes enraptured by the trail the Alpha’s tongue was following. “Do you remember the last time you ate? Or slept?” 

“I…” Honestly she couldn’t. She vaguely remembered having rice cakes around noon, but of  _ which _ day she wasn’t sure.

“I…” At a complete loss, she shrugged. 

“You haven’t been by in a week, Asami.” 

“Oh…”  _ Really? _

Korra led her away from the window, and Asami was grateful for the support. She was tired, much more tired than she’d thought.  _ Or allowed myself to feel. _

It dawned on her that, when forcing her to look at Republic City, Korra had meant she’d risked her life. Asami had allowed herself to be consumed by work, ignoring her friends and her body’s own needs. What good would saving Future Industries do, if she self-destructed in the process? 

_ Oh Spirits, I’m turning into him. _ The thought should have horrified Asami, but some deep part of her accepted it.  _ Maybe it’s in our blood. _

Her father had done the same after Yasuko’s passing. Full of pain and grief he had withdrawn into his work, showering Asami with gifts to replace the affection he knew he wasn’t giving her. He’d tried at times, but it hadn’t taken her long to understand that ,whenever he looked her in the eye, he saw his dead wife staring back. 

Asami stopped and, with a soft cry, she flung herself at Korra. Not caring what she’d think of her, she buried her face against the Avatar’s neck. Asami cursed herself for being weak, yet wanted to be.

Tentative at first, then more assuredly, Korra’s arms went around her waist and pulled her close. Asami curled into the unexpected warmth, unable to hold back a whimper. The night’s chill wasn’t so bad now, the Alpha’s arms cozier than any fire. 

“Come on.” Korra picked her up, making her yelp in surprise. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Bringing you to bed.”  

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on TWITTER for more stories and exclusive content](https://twitter.com/Kendrene17/)
> 
> [or find me on TUMBLR](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/)


End file.
